Throughout the three and a half thousand years of its recorded history, the province of Henan has had more than its fair share of natural disasters.
The proximity of the notoriously unpredictable Yellow River and the dependence on weather sensitive crops to feed its vast farming population caused famine and plague occur with an almost “natural” regularity. Droughts and floods came and went leaving behind decimated and impoverished peasant communities that over time always managed to rebuild their villages, bring the land back under cultivation and so temporarily restore their fragile fortunes. Slack government or corruption would sometimes aggravate the consequences of natural catastrophes; rarely, however, could man’s actions alone be blamed for their incidence.
Against this background, what set apart the calamities that befell Henan in the second half of the 20 th century was not only their unprecedentedly high death toll, but also the fact that human nature alone took the blame for bringing them about.
